“a Dec 1, 2017 14:58
I was hired by Tension LLC on Feb. 18th to run and oversee the Slack channel. At the time I was informed I was to keep and eye on and report back all community interaction. I tried to interject humor into this as I thought this was under the guise of an immersive theater project. This morning I approached the management about ethical concerns I had with numerous narrative threads taking place with those above me. I need to apologize for my role in what is happening and must step down immediately. I encourage you all to look closer at that which you signed up for. They lied to me and I am sure they are to you too. Look at the inconsistencies (Stephanie Hyden’s character) which in turn are the only consistencies. I apologize for my role in this.“

This morning I approached the management about ethical concerns I had with numerous narrative threads taking place with those above me.

Does A mean that the actual plot involves their direct superiors? And if so, assuming that those superiors are also the ones orchestrating this whole affair, what could they possibly have planned for themselves?

Or… does A just mean that there are story lines that they felt they needed to confront their bosses about?

So two things stand out to me here, in the talk of inconsistencies, A mentioned that they were hired to run the Slack starting in February, but it wasn’t actually started until June/July. Could be trying to tell us something there.

The other one is the phrase “Stephanie Hyden’s character”, implying that she’s been playing a “character”? version of herself? the whole time. We’ve wondered about those inconsistencies the whole time, but were never able to make heads or tails of it. If the inconsistencies are the only consistent thing, confusion and spinning us around may be a major goal right now.

1. Stephanie Hyden claimed to be helping Gordon Bijelonic at the 5.1 Registration Event with the Investors.

2. Stephanie was at the Briarberg event on 9.7, during which Mason and Morgan had their (presumably staged?) exchange.

3. The Part Two video showed that Mason, Michelle, Joyce, and Noah have all been working together.

4. Stephanie is now making calls on behalf of OSDM to sort logistics for the MSE.

Connect all the dots, and it leads to the conclusion that this entire thing thus far as been a concerted effort on the part of these different individuals to prepare us for the Mid-Season Event. No switching sides, murders, or double-crossing; that’s been an illusion designed to get us fired up and engaged (pretty much as Joyce described). Instead, we’re looking at a very systematic and methodical approach to emotionally engaging every single person here. But that still leaves me with one outstanding question.

Before touting herself as an OSDM rep, Stephanie previously said she was doing a favor for Gordon, and then was a member of Briarberg. All of that has been shared publicly, so the idea that she’s a double agent of any sort doesn’t really seem credible to me. But if these other allegiances have simply been roles donned for specific moments, then it stands to reason that “OSDM rep” could simply be a role as well.

Take that, and pair it with the fact that we’re supposedly all going to OSDM HQ in December despite knowing this isn’t a permanent location (and therefore not really OSDM HQ), and we’ve really got to question whether our friendly neighborhood boogeyman OSDM is even real at all.

Going back through @bcbishop‘s email here: A also appeared to run TheLustExperience email account. If memory serves, that’s the account that Sean and Buz communicated with, so that could be why Sean’s worried. Granik’s email to A does corroborate this story too, “Your role in this was to ensure they continue to talk, and provide us back examples of their voice.”

And not to put too fine a point on it, but the reference to people above @a — potentially meaning the folks that we think are “running” things — also being part of “narrative threads” seems to be yet another indicator that a lot more of this is fiction than some are willing to believe.

This is exactly what’s giving me a headache right now, @bcbishop. I feel like we’re buried SO DEEP into this that we just have no idea what’s going on at all. (Calling up Otis’ ace card in my mind) Everything we think we know, even the stuff we don’t say on here, for fear of it being too OOG, might all be actual bullshit. The Stephanies and the Sabrinas and the DLB/CSes and the creepy-ass Investors of the world might all be part of some gigantic lie that we don’t even know that we’re being fed. Everywhere we turn, it feels like there’s always something that doesn’t add up. I’m just so, so confused.

DLB is a real person. What he is really doing now, and why, are up for debate, but he exists.

CS/SDL is a real person.

Gordon Bijelonic is a real person.

Stephanie Hyden and Sabrina Kern are real people. As are Andrew Perez, Damien Gerard, Erika Quintana. All actors that exist, in the real world, and that have both appeared in the production Tension: Ascension and have talked to us in conversations we were allowed to share on this game board about their alleged experiences with that production.

But then there are a slew of people where it is not clear whether they are real at all.

Tom Barrow. Horace Sinclair. Noah Sinclair. Sarah Sinclair. Joyce Carlberg. Michelle. Mason. Those could be real people. Or they could be actors playing roles. That’s what seems to be the case with Otis (aka John). But for the rest, we don’t know.

We also can’t assume that anybody that we know to be a real person is not involved in a narrative thread. Mike Fontaine is a real person I know, but he sure seems wrapped in a narrative thread to me. Ditto Morgan Rooms.

So there are layers, and we can’t be sure, and that’s the glorious mindfuck of it all. But there is one last, final constant to rule them all.

The Lust Experience itself.

This is an experience we are all in. Everything up until now has been building to the mid-season event, and then presumably, a grand finale somewhere down the road. By definition, everything we’ve experienced has been in service of those moments. iConfidant, The System, BOS, HCDI; all of it. Because they have all been part of The Lust Experience.

It’s a meta way to look at things, but it is also shockingly simple. It needn’t taint the way we feel about any of the people we’ve come to interact with thus far, either.

What it does do is strip away all sense of safety that we have. We can’t hide in any preconceived notions or allegiances. There is no moral higher ground we can tell ourselves we are pursuing by liking one person, and not another.

There is only us. What we want. What we are willing to do to get it. And who that turns us into.

So if everything is part of The Lust Experience as @bcbishop mentioned, then Tension is also part of LUST in a similar way since it has been taken apart similar to OOA etc. In which case, couldn’t LUST just turn out to be part of something bigger in a similar way? Particularly since we’re seeing similar lines again from folks (in this case @a most recently) saying they thought this was “just immersive theatre”?

Also, re: @daela ‘s point about the possible of the helmet explaining Stephanie’s inconsistencies, I think someone brought up the idea in the forums last month (maybe also @bcbishop ? or @addisonborn ?) that maybe the helmet is us trying to hard. Maybe it’s literally the Experience itself that causes the changes in us and therefore the inconsistencies in Stephanie’s stories/character/whatnot. She did say she wanted out on the recording, and previously to y’all that she didn’t want anything to do with LUST, but if the Experience or TPTB dragged her back into it, it’s possible that the stress of being told to do things/made to/convinced to/whatever has led to inconsistencies?

Or like idk maybe everything is Anoch speaking through folks and they’re gonna bring the Oracles back.

Trying to understand all of this, to tease out what we’re missing (because I definitely feel like they’re suggesting we missed something).

“I was hired by Tension LLC on Feb. 18th to run and oversee the Slack channel.”

Since the Slack wasn’t launched until June, it means that either @a sat around for 4 months or was running -some- Slack, -somewhere-. Were there any other Slacks for Tension or any other possible option? Or is @a just another liar?

“At the time I was informed I was to keep and eye on and report back all community interaction. I tried to interject humor into this as I thought this was under the guise of an immersive theater project.”

Suggesting that either @a is and always was one person or that -this particular- @a was the one that occasionally made goofy comments (including as recently as yesterday or the day before). Also a claim that whoever @a is, they believed this was all JUST fictional, immersive theater.

“This morning I approached the management about ethical concerns I had with numerous narrative threads taking place with those above me.”

This is a very convoluted sentence that’s hard to understand. Does @a mean s/he had concerns with narrative threads that were ABOUT those above @a? Or did @a have concerns about numerous threads that INCLUDE those above @a (but are still being directed in our/participants’ direction)? Personally, I think it’s the latter that’s meant, but grammar-wise, it COULD be either.

“I need to apologize for my role in what is happening and must step down immediately. I encourage you all to look closer at that which you signed up for. They lied to me and I am sure they are to you too.”

This isn’t the first occurrence of this, right? That someone has essentially claimed that everything is a lie and tried to escape from it/apologize for it? I feel like this is an ongoing thread–that people join expecting it to be just ‘fiction’ and then realize there’s something much darker going on. And then they -try- to get out, with varying success. Or am I wrong here?

“Look at the inconsistencies (Stephanie Hyden’s character) which in turn are the only consistencies.”

We may have missed a specific thing here, in which case I’m not the right person to figure it out. But the real purpose of this sentence may simply be something more general–that we need to start pushing at the inconsistencies because THAT’s where the real answer lies. Less about a specific thing and more about a strategy.

“I apologize for my role in this.“

I think it’s interesting that @a apologizes twice. Whatever @a ran into and knows, it must have been TRULY upsetting. You don’t apologize twice unless you’re devastated.

I feel like we have had so many opportunities to realize we have been lied to over and over, but we keep clinging to something that makes us feel comfortable and treating that one thing as consistent. A was kind of that thing for me. Everything was a lie, except maybe A. A’s actual involvement and motivation was unclear, but there was a pattern. So, this is a little upsetting. Another lie revealing another fabricated pattern.

I do think that we are looking at even more suggestions that it’s all fiction. I’m officially dreading the reveal of the next lie. I think it’s going to smack us upside the face.

What the hell did A see that forced him/her into this position? There have been suggestions that A is a “they” or “them” – a Plural A. How is the A that just resigned related to the others? Were the others hired as well? Is there a version of A that is actually in charge?

Re: the inconsistencies of Stephanie Hyden’s “character,” I’m porting this over from #catchup. For anyone who’s just joined us, these are the inconsistencies in question.

Stephanie was a handler in The Tension Experience and befriended some participants, particularly Larry, after Tension had concluded. She told Larry and several others that she didn’t want to get involved in Lust…but in May she helped Gordon at the Lust Experience Registration. She did seem quite disgruntled that day, and afterward she continued to insist that she didn’t want to get dragged into Lust. At one point, she said that Darren was texting her and trying to get her involved. Because we believed there was a possibility this was a peek behind the curtain, we didn’t examine it too closely. We overlooked a lot.

At one point, when Hostess In Black posted, it appeared that TPTB had Stephanie take the heat and announce she had been the one to post. HIB immediately posted on Twitter to deny this. Stephanie also on several occasions sent Larry some out-of-character texts, then claimed not to remember sending them. Andrew Kasch also witnessed Stephanie receiving a phone call from Mason, back when he was pretending to be investigating Tension LLC ethics, and agreeing to meet or Skype. Later she appeared to change her mind and acted as if the meeting didn’t take place. But when some of us were chosen to meet with the Briarberg Foundation, Mason was there…and so was Stephanie. She claimed that Briarberg helped people get out of the cult.

At one point, someone leaked a private recording from Stephanie’s apartment. In the recording, she was saying that she wanted out. It’s unknown who leaked this or why.

At this point, we thought that Stephanie was with Briarberg. But later, she helped Sabrina (who to our knowledge is still OSDM) get into private club Cloak and Dagger. Was she taking orders from Sabrina? It was unclear.

And now, of course, she’s calling people on behalf of the OSDM, and referring to herself as “Stef”.

Oh, and at one point, Clint posted a picture of his dog on Instagram. In the background, there was returned-to-sender mail that he had apparently tried to send to Stephanie.

The reason we’ve never put all this into a single thread for discussion before is…it’s very hard to know where her privacy begins and ends. How much we are supposed to scrutinize a real person. But given that A mentioned her “inconsistencies,” apparently it’s time to start looking.

Is she a double agent?

Is she experiencing split personalities as a result of the helmet or some other form of OSDM control?

Is she simply always under orders, and everything we’ve seen has been intentionally contradictory to confuse us?

“Hey gang, what’s up? Been busy all day and just checking in. Stephanie showed up to rehearsal as a blonde in a red dress today. That was odd. Said she was coming from an audition.

No no, I’m kidding.

WTF was all that?????????????????”

I read the WTF part of the post and read it as applying to the blond-in-red-dress bit, like a back and forth between it being a real story and being a joke and then back to a real story. Going back to take that out of the post! Thank you for flagging – my bad.